Don Tapscot

Author of bestseller “Blockchain Revolution”

Founder of the Blockchain Research Institute (BRI)

Bio

on Tapscott, CEO of The Tapscott Group, is one of the world’s leading authorities on the impact of technology on business and society. He has authored over 15 books, including Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, which has been translated into over 25 languages.

Don’s most recent and ambitious book was co-authored with his son, startup CEO and bitcoin governance expert Alex Tapscott. “Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Underlying Bitcoin is Changing Business, Money and the World” was published in May 2016 and is, according to Harvard Business School’s Clay Christensen, “the book, literally, on how to survive and thrive in this next wave of technology-driven disruption.”

In 2017, Don and Alex co-founded the Blockchain Research Institute, whose 70+ projects are the definitive investigation into blockchain strategy, use-cases, implementation challenges and organizational transformations.

Don is a member of the Order of Canada and is ranked the 4th most influential management thinker in the world by Thinkers50. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Rotman School of Management and Chancellor of Trent University in Ontario. It is hard to imagine anyone who has been more prolific, profound, and influential in elucidating today’s technological revolutions and their impact on the world.

Catherine Mulligan

Co-Director, Centre for Cryptocurrency, Imperial College

Vice- Chairman, ETSI ISG Context Information Mgmt. London

Bio

Dr Catherine Mulligan is a Research Fellow in the Innovation and Entrepreneurship group, with a joint appointment to the Department of Computing where she is Co-Director of the Imperial College Centre for Cryptocurrency Research. She is a Fellow and an Expert of the World Economic Forum for Blockchain Technologies. She is the standardisation lead for the Open and Agile Smart Cities (OASC) Task Force and Vice Chairman of the European Telecommunications Standard Institute’s (ETSI) Industry Specification Groups (ISG) on Context Information Management.
Dr Mulligan regularly advises various governments on the role of digital technologies including the UK, EU, and Australasia. She is also an advisor to blockchain company Everledger.

Daniel Gasteiger

Co-Founder, Nexussquared,Zurich

Founder, Procivis, Zurich

Bio

He is an entrepreneur with over 20 years of banking experience at Credit Suisse and UBS covering various disciplines in Investment Banking and Corporate Center (trading, sales, product, project, programme, and general management/strategic advisory) both out of the Zurich and London headquarters.

In 2015, he co-founded Nexussquared, Switzerland, the first dedicated blockchain business and start-up platform which runs regular events targeting corporate executives, blockchain start-ups and students interested in the opportunities that come with blockchain technology. In 2016, he founded Procivis AG, an ‘e-government-as-a-service’ start-up, leveraging smart phone and blockchain technology to deliver citizen-centric services based on government-approved digital identities.

Daniel Haudenschild

CEO, Swisscom Blockchain AG

Daniel Haudenschild previously :
– Partner – Financial Services advisory, Ernst & Young
– Global Director – SAP Financial Services – Banking, HCL-Axon
– Principal, Ernst & Young

Bio

Daniel Haudenschild previously :
– Partner – Financial Services advisory, Ernst & Young
– Global Director – SAP Financial Services – Banking, HCL-Axon
– Principal, Ernst & Young

Efi Pylarinou

Co-founder of Daily Fintech & Advisor

Bio

A transformed financial professional with 20+ years experience,
• Wall Street expertise in a variety of asset classes (fixed income, Emerging markets, structured products, and hedge funds).
• Extensive content / publishing experience, intellectual diversity, exceptional communication skills.
• Multilingual and multicultural professional experience.

Co-founder of Daily Fintech, an established, global, insight driven platform and the crowd sourced knowledge platform, Fintech Genome.

Fintech domain focus on innovations in Capital markets & Wealth management. A global network with a social presence of 80,000 followers on Linkedin and 2,400 on Twitter.

Included in the 2016 Women in Fintech powerlist by Innovate Finance; in Women in Fintech DACH social ranking; the Global Fintech 80.

Bleeding edge innovation: Investor in Lykke shares and Advisor to the Pillar Project.
Finserv digitization projects: Content for incubments; Speaking engagements; and marketing/branding development for startups.

Jeremy Wilson

Member, Global Future Council on Blockchain, WEF

Vice-Chairman, Barclays Corporate Banking

Chairman, UK Govt. Engagement & Advisory Committee

Bio

Jeremy Wilson is Vice Chairman, Corporate Banking, responsible for Barclays’ representation on certain industry initiatives, as a representative of the financial services sector on global and regional industry bodies, & for engagement at Board or ExCo level with Barclays’ major corporate and institutional clients
He is Chair, UK Government Engagement & Advisory Group; Chair of the Data Sharing Principles Group (DSPG); Chair of the DSPG / TISA / UK Information Commission Group on a Code of Conduct for Data Sharing in the financial services sector; Chair of the Whitechapel Think Tank (a forum on Distributed Ledger technologies for government, regulators and the private sector) and Chair of the Banking Industry Environment Initiative Working Group. He is also a Trustee of a number of charitable Trusts covering the banking industry and education in the UK and overseas.
Jeremy Wilson has been Chair of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; Chairman, Barclays Bank Egypt; a Director of TheCityUK and Chair of TheCityUK Audit Committee; Chair of CHAPS Clearing Company Limited ; Chair of BAFT; a Board Director of BAFT and Chair of BAFT Nominations Committee ; a Chair of the Barclays Group Credit Committee, a Director of Barclays Pension Funds Trustees Limited, a Director of the Bankers’ Benevolent Fund , Chair of the International Finance Conference (IFC) and Co-Chair of BAFT Europe Council.
He was born in South Africa, brought up in Kenya, and now lives in England. He is married with four children.

Jennifer Zhu Scott

Founder, Radian Hong Kong

Bio

Jennifer Zhu Scott is the founding principal of Radian Partners, a private investment firm for family offices and UHNWIs focusing on Artificial Intelligence, the Blockchain, and renewable energy. She is also the co-founder of Radian Blockchain Ventures, using the Blockchain technology to transform physical infrastructures starting with the solar industry. Prior, she was head of business development and strategy in APAC for Thomson Reuters and led the firm’s speech-to-text, deep search, video-indexing projects. She co-founded one of the first education companies in China and exited before moving to the UK as a senior advisor to the education subsidiary of Daily Mail & General Trust.
Jennifer served the 2014-16 term as one of the 18 council members of China Council convened by the Global Agenda Council, the World Economic Forum’s think tank. She is currently serving as one of 24 members of the Council of The Future of Blockchain at WEF. In 2013, Jennifer was honored by WEF as a Young Global Leader. Jennifer studied Applied Mathematics at Sichuan University and holds an MBA in Finance with Manchester Business School, where she earned distinction with her research on PE/VC in China and was awarded as a Distinguished Alumni. She completes the public policy and leadership program at Yale University in 2013 and Harvard Kennedy School in 2016. Jennifer is China Fellow of Aspen Institute and a permanent member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. Jennifer is a board and advisory board member of numerous AI and Blockchain empowered companies, including RNDR of OTOY, which is advised by Dr. Eric Schmidt of Google, Ari Emanuel of WME IMG, and director JJ Abrams

Leanne Kemp

Founder &CEO, Everledger, London

Bio

Leanne Kemp is Founder & CEO of Everledger, a digital global ledger that tracks and protects high value assets including diamonds. She has an extensive background in emerging technologies, business, jewellery and insurance, having past successful startups under her belt including
Leanne founded Everledger in 2015 with the purpose of ensuring transparency in global supply chains for risk and fraud mitigation. This is done by developing a digital solution using the best of emerging technology including blockchain, smart contracts and machine vision.
With strong knowledge and experience in the diamond and jewellery industry, Leanne focused on diamonds in the application of blockchain. To date, over 1.6 million diamonds have been encrypted onto the blockchain by Everledger.
In 2016, Everledger officially came on board to partner with the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme. Under a UN mandate, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme was established in 2002 for the purpose of regulating trade in rough diamonds as a combative effort against conflict diamonds. Under the Kimberley Process, certified member participants must meet a minimum set of requirements that govern the trade in rough diamonds. Only diamonds from these member countries can be certified conflict-free and permitted to enter the mainstream international diamond market.
With Everledger’s solution, paper-based records within the Kimberley Process are transformed onto a digital ledger that is immutable and secure, lending credibility and authenticity to the process.
In 2017, Everledger forged a partnership with the Singapore Diamond Investment Exchange (SDiX) and Kynetix. This partnership saw the completion of the first part of a Proof-of-Concept of a blockchain-based authentication and secure record-keeping service for trading diamonds on a global commodity exchange.

Lina Hediah

Executive Director of Europe, Middle East, and Africa, ConsenSys

Bio

Lee Pickavance

Enterprise Strategy and Business Development Director, ConsenSys (London) 

Bio

Katherine Foster

Executive Director, Blockchain Labs for Open Collaboration, FinTech4Good, Washington DC

Bio

Katherine Foster is the Executive Director of Blockchain Labs for Open Collaboration (BLOC) which is Headquartered in Copenhagen and the Director of FinTech4Good Headquartered in Washington D.C. Both organizations focus on open collaboration on digital infrastructure to bolster the sustainable development goals. For the past twelve years Ms. Foster was based in Switzerland where she served as Development and Innovation Lead at Climate-KIC, Europe’s largest and official climate innovation and entrepreneurship initiative. A former diplomat, she also served as the Canadian Representative on Climate Change to the USA and multilateral community, on the Human Security Network and on the NAFTA Commission for Environmental Cooperation. Katherine has helped develop innovations with key corporate, NGO, government, educational institutions and startups on issues ranging from microfinance and fin-tech to sustainable food and transport.

Marcelo Garcia

Founder and President, BroadLights.org

Bio

Marcelo Garcia has a distinguished career of more than twenty years in the Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) industry – from being a member of the core team which helped build one of the largest TV studios in the world back in 1995 to participating in several pioneering Digital TV and Broadband deployments worldwide.
Leveraging that strong base he began focusing on the Technological Transformation of Cities, associated with the United Nations as a Smart Cities Expert of the UNECE International PPP Centre of Excellence – established in partnership with the IESE Business School of Barcelona.

Massimiliano di Gregorio

PwC Middle East Financial Partner

Bio

Massimiliano di Gregorio is a Consulting Partner in the Digital and Technology Practice at PwC Middle East. He is a trusted advisor to CxOs and IT executive teams of global Financial Services organisations on digital transformation, technology strategy, FinTech, enterprise agility, operations automation, planning and mobilization of large scale business and IT transformations.
Mr. di Gregorio has a Master degree in Electronic Engineering (cum laude).

Matthias Ruch

Founder of Lakeside.Partners, Organiser of the Largest Blockchain Competition in Europe

Bio

Michael Stuijt

CEO, Eurogiro A/S Copenhagen

Bio

His expertise is in the financial services industry: corporate banking, corporate lending, equipment and aircraft leasing, structured finance. Furthermore; international payments, transaction banking, and cash management; (cross-border) high volume payments and cards processing; Fintech and blockchain technology.
In addition, he has experience in Information Communication Technology (ICT) consulting services (related to the banking and payments industry); strategic advisory services; international account management; change management; general management and interim management.

Monty Metzger

Founding Partner, Digital Leaders Ventures, San Francisco

Bio

Monty C. M. Metzger, Partner at Digital Leaders Ventures (www.DLV.vc), is an acclaimed thought leader on the future of digital. Rather than focusing on the distant future, Monty takes an anthropological approach – scanning the near horizon global trends, disruptive technologies and consumer innovations on the verge of hitting critical mass, and then translating these into usable business strategies.

In his current role as a Founding General Partner at Digital Leaders Ventures (DLV) he is embracing the opportunities of Blockchain, Crypto-Tech, bitcoin and alternative cryptocurrencies. DLV is a fully registered Alternative Investment Fund headquartered in Luxembourg preparing several institutional offerings of cryptocurrencies (still confidential). Monty is also coaching institutions, governments and startups on blockchain, cryptocurrencies and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).

Peter Braun

Member of the Board, EBAN- European Trade Association, Zurich

Bio

Having administered dozens of investments in start-ups and scale-ups, he has built a vast network in various high-tech verticals as well as a global network of investors. He is a firm believer in the necessity of bridging cultural gaps by building global companies through cross-border investments.

Philippe Thévoz

e-government systems VP, SICPA

Bio

My AIM is

• to Accompany Governments in their journey toward eGovernment, Smart City and eHealth
• to Guide Governments and Public Administrations in their Digital & Technological Transformation
• to Advise Governments and Public Administrations in their adoption of Blockchain technology

SKILLS PORTFOLIO
• Digital Transformation
• Blockchain and Distributed Ledger
• eGovernment
• Smart City and eHealth
• Entrepreneurship & Strategy
• Leadership & Team Management
• Operational & Commercial Management

Dr. Peita Lin

Bio

Peita Lin holds a PhD in financial economics and has a background in computer science. His research involved creating game theoretical models of speculation in IPOs, mechanism design, and decentralized matching markets. He’s worked closely as a software engineer with tech startups such as Amity, an interactive messaging platform backed by Facebook’s former Head of Mobile and the creator of Google Maps; and OB1 (OpenBazaar), the world’s first decentralized marketplace that uses Bitcoin

Pierre-Edouard Wahl

Fmr VP Innovation & Blockchain, Crédit Suisse, Zurich

Bio

After graduating from University of Edinburgh with an Engineering degree, Pierre-Edouard Wahl began working with virtual currency and built a marketplace that used its own closed currency to facilitate trade while lowering the cost of transacting on the platform. He went on to become an integral part of the Bay Area Bitcoin community and further developed his expertise in Blockchain technology after moving to the Bay Area in 2012.
While in the Bay Area, Pierre-Edouard launched a B2B crypto-exchange that enabled developers to build solutions for their customers to purchase and sell Bitcoin without having to worry about jurisdiction, banking support or license.
More recently, Pierre-Edouard has worked for 3 years at Credit Suisse as Vice-President of Innovation and Blockchain lead. During that time he started and lead the bank’s Blockchain research initiative and continues to experiment with numerous parties in the Blockchain industry. He has now left the bank and is looking for his next challenge.
Pierre-Edouard is passionate about fringe technologies and believes that cryptographic ledger technology will play a key role in democratizing access to value creation, distribution and dissemination.

Rosanna Chan

Founder, Therefore

Fmr. Digital Economist, World Bank Washington, DC

Bio

Dr. Rosanna Chan is the founder of the Blockchain Working Group in the World Bank, and is an award-winning economist focusing on digital economic development. Her work has been featured the World Economic Forum (WEF), and had been actively involved in the UN global e-Commerce initiative. She is an expert in policy and strategy by governments and firms to help them navigate sources of growth in the brave new world of a global digital economy.
She has a forthcoming publication, a chapter entitled “Global Financial Institutions 2.0” in the Handbook of Blockchain, Digital Finance, and Inclusion, published by Elsevier, co-authored with Managing Partner at investment firm StillMark Co., Alyse Killeen.

Samantha Stein

Director Of Special Projects & Battlefield Editor, TechCrunch

Bio

Samantha’s background spans business development, product management, and product strategy. Equal parts IQ and EQ, she currently helps spur new solutions to grand challenges through technical innovation retreats and innovation consulting at Hacktivision. Previously, she lead business development efforts at Keepsafe, a software company that makes digital privacy as easy as closing a door. As a member of the founding team of Vint, Samantha’s critical work, synthesizing user research into product features, informed its evolution from a marketplace to an enterprise software product that increases retention in the fitness industry. Prior to Vint, Samantha also founded an early-stage e-commerce startup.

Samantha also served as a consultant to over 50 of USAIDs Tech and Innovation portfolio investments across MedTech, AgriTech, EdTech, and CleanTech. Her work helped innovators scale their businesses and secure additional funding from both government and private sources, including from venture capital firms and angels. A large part of her work consisted of leveraging intellectual property assets to secure additional funding for entrepreneurs.

Samantha’s interests also span human rights and public affairs. While living in Morocco, she founded Tools for Tolerance Morocco, an international nonprofit focused on cross-cultural communication and technical skills training for disenfranchised Moroccan youth. Always agile, Samantha raised tens of thousands of dollars from individual donors, grants, as well as in-kind support from government and NGOs, and leveraged the above resources to build a technical center in Casablanca, develop the country’s first human rights educational curriculum, and reach thousands of individuals.

Søren Fog

CEO & Founder, Iprotus

Board Member, Crypto Valley Asscn, Zug

Bio

Søren is a lifelong entrepreneur and visionary who was an early adopter of blockchain technology in Zug, Switzerland, and who kickstarted the ecosystem and co-founded what became the globally renowned Crypto Valley Association. He also founded two startups in the blockchain space. 1) iprotus, focusing on tokenization in the supply chain in order to remove counterfeit products from the supply chain, create provenance of product journeys and further to free up working capital to better distribute wealth, provide inclusion and modernization particularly outside the western world, and 2) TokenBooster, servicing start-ups and existing companies with ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) also known as TGEs (Token Generating Events), understanding the “tokenomics”, or token economics, regulatory and legal challenges, and to some extent mapping existing investing models to a new token based one. Søren is furthermore frequently a speaker at major events world wide, and also consulting stakeholders at highest governmental level and is as such a connecting point for global exchange of knowledge in his space.

Stephan Karpischek

Co-Founder, EtheriscVienna

Bio

Stephan is digital strategist at disrupt consulting and has more than 20 years experience in IT businesses. He advises finance and telecom enterprises on digital strategy. In 2015 he was part of the of the UBS crypto 2.0 innovation lab at Level39 in London. Stephan has been working on digital currencies since 2008 and likes to play with Blockchains.

Yobie Benjamin

Founder  & CTO Emits, Token.io

CTO, ClickSWITCH San Francisco

Bio

Yobie Benjamin is a successful venture investor and innovator in life sciences, IoT, FinTech, sustainability and consumer products. In recognition of his technology achievements in virtual reality, the World Economic Forum named him as a 2015 Technology Pioneer.
Currently Mr. Benjamin is an Innovation Fellow at 4iNNO, working on health care disruption with several Fortune 100 firms.
He is also senior advisor and mentor to several startups in the technology and synthetic biology space — AstroDigital.com (satellites and space imagery, satellite communications), CambrianInnovation.com (clean water and clean power), Stilla (wearables), WildlifeWorks.com (forest and wildlife conservation/carbon credits), WearableWorld (IoT accelerator), Moni.com (payments/FinTech), Filld.com (fuel and energy delivery) and IndieBio (synthetic biology accelerator).
Mr. Benjamin is also the Consulting CTO of ClickSWITCH.com, a service that helps financial institutions become more competitive by solving the complex problem of switching account holders’ direct deposits and electronic payments to new accounts. He also serves as CTO Emiritus of Token.io, providing software to banks that enables them to issue a new payment type designed specifically for use in the digital era. Mr. Benjamin has recently raised $18.5MM for Token.
Mr. Benjamin is a member of the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank Faster Payments Task Force. He is also an adjunct lecturer at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, teaching an executive education course on Global Angel Investing.
Previously, Mr. Benjamin was Global Chief Technology Officer for Citibank Institutional Clients Group/Global Transaction Services. He was also Chairman of Citi’s Research Development Innovation & Learning Center. For many years, Mr. Benjamin was a Partner and Chief of Global Strategy at Ernst & Young, LLP.
He was a co-founder of Avegant, where he led the software development of the next generation of virtual reality and augmented/mixed reality devices (winner of a 2014 CNN Top 10 Technology Products award for the Avegant Glyph and Skully Systems AR1 Helmet).
Mr. Benjamin has also served as Managing Director/Partner at Computer Sciences Corporation. He was former chair for a civilian volunteer group NASA AMES Collaboration Labs.
He is currently writing a book, “Tribes of the Valley” chronicling the different power tribes and groups in Silicon Valley. It is due for publication in Q3 of 2018.
Portfolio: ClickSWITCH.com, Token.io ($18.5MM raised), Avegant ($48MM raised), Skyport Systems ($67M venture raised), Gusto.com ($170M venture raised), Indie Bio ($200M incubator and fund), Wearable World, Wildlife Works.com ($200M climate change fund).

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